Death Take a Holiday...Seriously.

Okay, I want to finish this month of belated eulogies with a couple of brief mentions and then hopefully not write anything about death for a long time; Bob Dylan, Clint Eastwood please take good care of yourself.

Merv Griffin 1925-2007
Sure he may have had a popular talk show and built a game show empire (as a kid I recall pretty much every afternoon game show concluding with an announcer informing us that it was a "Merv Griffin production") , but to me Mr. Griffin will always be the Elevator Killer.


Tony Wilson 1950-2007
One of the biggest behind the scene names in the British punk & post-punk movement, Tony Wilson founded Factory Records whose roster included seminal bands Joy Division, New Order, A Certain Ratio and the Happy Mondays. He also opened the popular Manchester nightclub The Hacienda which brought dance music to rock audiences. He was the basis of Michael Winterbottom's 2002 film 24 Hour Party People where Steve Coogan gave a wonderful and hilarious performance as Wilson (perhaps now we can get a new DVD cover). Here's a 1984 interview with Wilson at the Hacienda where you get a sense of Wilson's personality and wit:

And here's a clip from the movie where Coogan as Wilson converses with God who overall praises Wilson's accomplishments but with one caveat, not signing The Smiths:


Ulrich Muhe 1953-2007
He appeared on the verge of if not international fame at least a long and interesting career as a character actor coming off his great performance as a Stasi agent hired to spy on a playwright in this year's Academy Award winning Best Foreign Language film, The Lives of Others. After seeing Others I had thought that he would make a great Bond villain. His final performance will be in a Italian/German co-production called Nemesis, hopefully it will attract a stateside release.

Jeremy Blake 1971-2007
Artist Jeremy Blake's suicide following the suicide of his longtime girlfriend Theresa Duncan is a fascinating and tragic story of two very talented people pushed to the edge by paranoia. To get a more in depth look at the story, here's an article that sums up what drove the couple to the edge. I'll have to admit that I knew very little about Ms. Duncan before her death, but I knew Blake's work, most notably the cover to Beck's Sea Change album and his inter-scene color animation experiments in Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch Drunk Love.

Death Goes to the Movies, Sees an Arty Foreign Film at a Rep Theatre

The belated eulogies continue as we grieve three giants of film:

Ingmar Bergman 1918-2007
Michelangelo Antonioni 1912-2007
Sherman Torgan 1943-2007

Whether or not you know anything about world cinema, the first two names are instantly familiar to you, and if you are a film buff, then in the last few weeks you probably have read approximately 457 articles or blog entries about their death. I don't feel I have a fresh or interesting new perspective to add to the conversation, I enjoy films by both men, but have seen far too little (three of Antonioni and about eight of Bergman) to consider myself well versed in their oeuvre. For informed opinions, I recommend reading this interview with Bergman fanatic and disciple Woody Allen at Time. And for Antonioni, Martin Scorsese should do.

What I did find interesting was the reaction that their day-apart passings stirred in cineastes. At the Criterion Collection forum, the overwhelming conclusion was that the two auteurs' passing signaled nothing short of the final death blow for the foreign art film. A strange assertion seeing how in the past 25 years, Bergman directed all of one theatrically released film (he was however still very active in theatre in his home country of Sweden) and Antonioni co-directed one feature, in 1995. Agreeing with the assertion that the art film is officially dead was none other than noted feminist author Camilla Paglia, but while she loved her some early Bergman and Antonioni, she doesn't consider the death of art films as such a bad thing(link).Meanwhile, as they are apt to, the contrarians came out to declare Bergman as "not all that", most famously Chicago Reader critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, which inspired a reaction from Roger Ebert, basically amounting to: "is so!"
I do see the worrywart foreign film buff's point to some extent. How many modern day foreign filmmakers, or at least those who work solely or primarily in their native country, are the household name that either Bergman or Antonioni were, even by people who never saw one of their films? Pedro Almodovar, perhaps. Maybe Wong-Kar Wai. All the other big name modern foreign auteurs I considered have worked pretty evenly between their country and American features (John Woo, Ang Lee, Alfonso Cauron, et cetera). Let's be frank, there was never a time when Ma and Pa Kettle in the Heartland ever thought "You know what I'd like to watch tonight? A film dealing with ennui amongst the European elite, that's what!" "What? While there's that dreamy meditation on god existsence?" However, there was a time when its was considered a necessity to catch the latest arty foreign fare if you lived in a major metropolitan city or college town (see Woody Allen's 70's input for examples). Many of Bergman's films were theatrically distributed in America via major studios such as Warner Bros, as were three of Antonioni's most notorious (albeit English language) input from the 60s & 70s, including his only American made film, Zabriskie Point , which famously concludes (I must admit I haven't see the film, hopefully his death will prompt a DVD release) with "FUCK AMERICA" written in the sky.

I remember when I was kid seeing the poster for Bergman's Fanny and Alexander in the lobby of the theatre where I saw A Christmas Story (and what a great double bill those films would make, two radically different takes on childhood holiday nostalgia). I grew up in San Jose, not exactly a small town, but in 1982, pre-internet boom, not a major metropolitan city by any stretch. Today, foreign films, unless they have a sellable hook or are genre fare, tend to be stuck mainly to the festival circuit and a one or two week theatrical engagement, even in Los Angeles and New York. Whether that is due to changing exhibition methods or DVD or a shift in general taste in America towards escapist fare is up to a lengthier debate then I am prepared for on this humble blog, but what I will state is that even if Ingmar and Michelangelo lived and made films into their 200s this would not alter the fate of the foreign art film, which will always have its devoted following, but probably never regain their prominence in America.

A death that saddens me more than the two directors (who at a combined age of 187 weren't exactly spring chickens) was Sherman Torgan, a name that unless you live in Los Angeles is no doubt unfamiliar to you (sadly its probably the case even for many that do reside in LA). He was only 62 years old when he suffered a heart attack and died in late June. He was the owner/manager/propertier of the New Beverly Cinema, one of the last remaining repertory theatres in Southern California, and my personal favorite.

The New Beverly, a former pornographic theatre, was refurbished in the 70s by Torgan and turned into a rep theatre with revolving double bills of classic, cult, foreign and forgotten films, usually changing features every two or three days. When I moved to Los Angeles a few years ago, it was the place that made me fall in love with the potential of the city. I've had two first dates there as well as the second date with my fiance. In the five years living here I've seen theatrically for the first time at the New Beverly: Notorious, MASH, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Sunset Boulevard, The Magnificent Ambersons, Duck You Sucker, Bottle Rocket, and a week before Sherman's passing, Barry Lydon to name just a few. It struck me while watching Barry Lyndon why I loved the theatre. Here I am experiencing a thirty year old methodically paced three hour epic considered at the time of its release a major disappointment with about a hundred others who were caught in just as much rapt attention and awe as myself.

While I never had any conversations with him personally, I will always remember Sherman as the guy who was eternally running low on small bills and would give a little staredown to those that paid using a twenty dollar bill for his cheap (especially in Los Angeles) seven dollar admission. I always tried to make a point of giving him exact change as a small form of gratitude for his work. Sherman made keeping the admission affordable a top priority, and I'd often notice people in the theatre that look downtrodden or even homeless, I assumed Sherman would let them in free of charge, giving them entertainment and temporary respite from outside.

The theatre felt like a secret to many of LA's film enthusiast, if you look closely you can see the famous New Beverly calendar make appearences in Swingers and Border Radio, but in March it gained some exposure as Quentin Tarantino threw a two month long Grindhouse Festival at the theatre to promote Grindhouse. The Los Angeles Times who usually gives the theatre little more than perfunctory notices in its revival theatre listings dedicated a weekend Calendar front page to the festival. When I caught a few of the films in the series I was greeted with a sight I had never experienced, lines around the block. This was one secret I had no problems sharing however, and I was glad that its once questioned future seemed bright for a change.

After much soul searching, Sherman's son Michael has decided to keep the theatre operating, and to that I say "thank you". I know the loss of a father trumps a film geek's loss of his or her favorite theatre, but the New Beverly was Sherman's gift to us and his life's work, and I am glad that it will be around to entertain and educate its patrons for the foreseeable future (though if you want to put in new seats, I will totally be okay with that!)

Think globally, act locally is a famous if simplistic slogan, but Torgan's theatre represents that very ideal. For it and its ilk are the places that will ensure that films by the likes of Bergman and Antonioni will not only still be seen, but seen in a theatre with a receptive audience, where they should be.

Death goes straight, opens up your gates, maybe tells you about Phaedra

Lee Hazlewood 1929-2007

I think what best displays the originality of the recently deceased singer-songwriter Lee Hazlewood is that three of the music stores I frequent all classify him under three separate genres. In one store he will be found with the country western artists, in another, the "oldies" section (alongside 60's psych bands like Love and 13th Floor Elevators and pop harmonists such as the Righteous Brothers and The Ronettes) and in the third, amidst the pop vocalist amongst such icons as Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. Apropos because where exactly would you put someone who can be considered a hybrid of the likes of Sinatra, Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen and the sixties psychedelic garage movement? Writers invented a genre to try a scratch the surface of Hazlewood's style, "cowboy psychedelia". While he never gained the fame of a Sinatra or Dylan or Cash, his uniqueness is what has kept him relevant long after artists that sold more have been forgotten. In the past ten or so years, younger bands and music collectors have started to recognize his talents. His songs have been covered by the likes of Primal Scream and Slowdive, his music has popped up in films (such as Lynne Ramsey's Morvern Callar) and part of his oeuvre has been rereleased through Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelly's record label, Smells Like records.

If you are interested in Hazlewood's music but don't know where to start, allow me to make three suggestions.

Nancy & Lee (1968) -- After penning Nancy Sinatra's famous kiss-off anthem "These Boots are Made for Walking", the pair teamed up for this duet album. Nancy was Hazlewood's greatest collaborator, on record they have a chemistry that matches Bogart and Bacall's on-screen fireworks. Despite his deep baritone voice, Hazlewood was great at writing songs with equal feminist and masculine P.O.V.s and would continually duet with other female vocalists on later albums. But here is his finest foil. The album contains covers of some standards (such as the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost that Loving Feeling" and "Jackson") along with some original material such as the now classic "Some Velvet Morning" and my personal favorite, "Summer Wine".

Cowboy in Sweden (1970) -- For a spell, Hazlewood lived in Stockholm, while there he recorded this concept album of alienation amongst subcultures, equating the combination of western swagger and European cool as being like, well, a cowboy in Sweden. The song that best demonstrates these contrasting styles is "Hey Cowboy" a duet he sung with Swedish Nancy Sinatra stand-in, Nina Lizell. It's funny, but this album always struck me as being cinematic (I am even in the process of working on a screenplay inspired by the track "The Night Before") but it wasn't until after his death I learned that this album provided the soundtrack for a Swedish television movie by director Torbjorn Axelman. From the look of things, it pretty much a collection of music videos for each track on the album. Here's a clip from the film, the aforementioned "Hey Cowboy".



Requiem for an Almost Lady (1971)-- Another concept album, this time finding Hazlewood readopting the storyteller technique he used on the earlier album, Trouble is a Lonesome Town, to create a narrative revolving around the disintegration of a relationship. Each individual song is introduced with a spoken monologue. This album shares a particularly special place with me because not only was it the first Hazlewood album I ever purchased, I also happened to be going through a break-up at the time I picked it up. Hazlewood perfectly surmises the range of emotional responses of a heartbroken person: sadness, anger, despair, self-hate, and black humor. This is best captured in his introduction to the track "Won't You Tell Your Dreams" where he remarks: "Dreams have never been my friends. When I had you, I never dreamed of you. But since you've been gone, I dream of nothing else. Dreams have never been my friends"

A lot of Hazlewood's work is out of print, I also heartily recommend Trouble is a Lonesome Town and 13, both readily available, and I look forward to picking up The Cowboy and the Lady, a duet album with another saucy 60's chick, Ann Margaret. Last year he released Cake or Death, an album written after he was diagnosed with cancer. If there's one benefit of his passing it's hopefully that his entire oeuvre will soon be assessable. We'll miss you Lee, hope the afterlife is full of beautiful ladies for you to sing with.

Death Scripts His First 15 Plays

Bill Walsh 1931-2007

As I have said before, my very first recollection of any football game was the 1982 NFC Championship game between the Dallas Cowboys and the San Francisco 49ers, what is now affectionately referred to as either "The Catch Game" or "The Game That Launched a Dynasty". For the first six or seven seasons that I was cognizant of the game of football, I was lucky enough to root for a team that was coached by William Ernest Walsh, I will consider myself lucky if another 49er coach in my lifetime has half the amount of football savvy or brains that Mr. Walsh possessed.

He is referred to as "The Genius", but genius is a word that gets thrown about too carelessly this days, so I wish to posthumously redub him either "The Architect" or more aptly, "The Artist". Bill Walsh is to the NFL what Orson Welles is to cinema, what Bob Dylan or Miles Davis are to music, what Frank Lloyd Wright is to architecture and hell, what DaVinci was to art (or codes, even). A person who saw past the limitations of his profession and reinvented the form. A person whose distinct influence is more persuasive today then it was in his tenure. Someone whose methods were once considered strange or controversial and today are considered the standard. The NFL is what it is today, the most dominant sporting league in America by a tremendous margin, thanks in large part to Walsh's offensive schematics that changed league emphasis from a primarily run first philosophy to passing early and often. To paraphrase a famous commercial "Chicks dig the Touchdowns!" His "West Coast Offense" spreads across the continent.

Even today, nineteen seasons after he retired from the 49ers, several of his coaching assistants are currently head coaches around the league, including Super Bowl winning coaches Mike Holmgren, Mike Shanahan and Brian Billick, what more several of these disciples have seen their assistants become head coaches, the Walsh family tree envelopes at least half the NFL. But what I think best displays Walsh's influence on not just the NFL but the sport itself, the University of Nebraska, the program who made prominent the option quarterback who throws about five attempts per game and prided itself on punishing defense and as an institution for strong runners (including 49er alums Roger Craig and Tom Rathman) is now operating out of the West Coast offense.

Goodbye Bill.

Dan Haren named AL starting pitcher for tomorrow's All Star Game in San Francisco

I kind of thought Haren's chances would have drastically slimmed after getting roughed up in his last two starts where his ERA increased from 1.78 to 2.30, but luckily Detroit manager Jim Leyland disregarded those as flukes (and thank you C.C. Sabbathia for having a horrendous last start) read this well argued blog entry (not proven, but c'mon) and went ahead and named Haren starting pitcher, so I guess Barry you will just have to wait until your second at bat to hit your dramatic home run. Hopefully this will inspire the A's to, you know, start winning some games again.

While I am on my high horse, Chris Mullen if you are reading this, and we know you are...trade for Kevin Garnett.

Trailers of the Week: Wake Me When its Autumn

Although today's calendar technically marks the first day of summer, we are already midway through the annual all sequels and blockbusters all the time fare that the major studios so graciously offer us at this time every year. And thus far the pickings have been, shall we say...uninspiring. This became all the more evident when trailers for a trio of upcoming fall releases popped up on the internet this week promising cinematic goodness still months in the waiting. Daylight savings can't get here fast enough.


No Country For Old Men

The Coen brothers first film since the much reviled The Ladykillers in 2004, which by the way I didn't think was as awful as its reputation and actually enjoyed more than Intolerable Cruelty, but still felt like the brothers were in a holding pattern of sorts, why were one of the most unique modern filmmakers wasting time remaking a perfectly fine film? No Country for Old Men premiered at Cannes last month, and while it came home without any prizes, it did receive copious amounts of praise. Judging from the trailer, it looks like a return to the Blood Simple/Miller's Crossing vibe for the Coens. "The Ultimate Badass" indeed. No Country For Old Men opens in select cities on November 9th (that better mean Los Angeles buddy) and throughout the country on November 21st.

There Will Be Blood

After having four films released in a five year span between 1997 and 2002, there has been no Paul Thomas Anderson directed films in the five years since, though he did assist Robert Altman on A Prairie Home Companion. I am one of the rare, but devoted, persons who thought his last film, Punch Drunk Love, was also his best. I also loved Hard Eight and Boogie Nights and have an interesting love-hate relationship with Magnolia, which I actually thought worked best during its most indulgent moments; i.e. the opening montage, the singalong and the frogs. There Will Be Blood, the first of his films that is an adaptation (of the Upton Sinclair novel, Oil!) and not an original story, looks to be his most ambitious work to date. Looks like he boned up on his Terence Malick during preproduction. This is not an official teaser, but just something that he gave the good people at the P.T. Anderson fansite, Cigarettes and Red Vines as a way of whetting their appetites. Consider my appetite duly whetted, sir. There Will Be Blood opens in select cities on November 21st.

Margot at the Wedding

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While I found his first two films, Kicking and Screaming (not the Will Ferrell soccer movie) and Mr. Jealousy a little too "clever", and at the time partially placed the responsibility of my less than impressed response to Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic on his contribution as co-writer, his last film The Squid and the Whale, changed my tune on Noah Baumbach. It was my favorite American film of 2005, an honest, devastating but hilarious take on divorce and its effect on children. His latest film stars Nicole Kidman and his wife Jennifer Jason Leigh as sisters reuniting for Leigh's marriage to Jack Black. It opens in limited theatres on October 19th.

And as a special bonus, here is the first photo from what will be one of my most anticipated films of Autumn 2008, Spike Jonze's third feature (and at that point, first in six years), Where the Wild Things Are, the adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic children's book.

Pitching Dan Haren

Early this afternoon the Oakland Athletics were one out away from being no hit by a forty year old pitcher, they have no regular everyday starter with a batting average above .300, they are six games out of first place in the AL West to the hottest team over the last month, the Los Angeles Angels (of Anaheim), at one point their entire outfield was on the DL, currently their DH is on the DL, as is their closer, and two of their starting pitchers, on top of which, coming into the season they didn't have a clear cut number five starter. Yet, they are three games above .500 and that is all due to some exceptional starting pitching, foremost being opening day starter Dan Haren. This is my pitch (pun fully intended) for Haren to be named not only an All Star, but to the AL starting pitcher in the All-Star Game.

Haren is still an up and comer, he doesn't have the sexy name, he's not the Rocket, Dice-K or Schilling, he's not the sexy strikeout specialist that Johan Santana or Justin Verlander are (though he does have 14 more K's at this point of the season than Verlander), and most importantly he doesn't play for a team that wears pinstripes or has a red B on their cap. But what he has been during the first two and a third months of the season is the best pitcher in the AL and running neck and neck with the Padre's Jake Peavy for best pitcher in the entire major league.

Let's look at Haren's stats:

E.R.A: 1.70 (1st in AL, 2nd in MLB)
Opponent's Batting Average: .178 (1st in MLB)
W.H.I.P: 0.87 (1st in MLB)
Strikeouts*: 70 (8th in AL, 13th in MLB)
Innings Pitched: 90 (tied for 2nd in AL, tied for 4th in MLB)
Walks Allowed: 21 (7th in AL amongst pitcher with at least 75 innings pitched)
Record: 6-2 (7th in AL, I will get more into this)

* (As discussed in Sam Walker's book Fantasyland (thanks by the way, Heath), strikeouts are one of the most overrated stats in baseball, strikeouts are not the most effective strategy because most take about seven pitches to achieve, eating into pitch counts and shortening the length of a pitcher's start)

In comparison, let's look at the stats at this point of last year's opening day starter for the A's, the San Francisco Giants' newest ace, and millionaire a hundred times over, Barry Zito.

His line:

6-5. Era: 3.87. 44 K vs 38 Walks. WHIP: 1.35. Innings Pitched: 74.1.

This isn't to slag on Zito. He's a solid pitcher and it wasn't like the A's made any effort to resign him and after a pretty awful start (including a nice trouncing by his former team) he's vastly improved, allowing only two earned runs over his last three starts. He'll be fine. The sight of him in a Giants uniform is still disturbing, but hey at least it's not the Yankees, Angels or Red Sox. Oh by the way, Harden v. Zito this Saturday!

What I meant to show by comparing his stats to Zito's is that Haren has thrived when given the leadership role and along with the surprising Chad Gaudin (winner of his last five decisions, second in the AL in ERA) a former relief pitcher thriving in his new role as starter, he's getting the young injury plagued and hitting slump prone Athletics through a very tough part of the early season and keeping them in a position to make a late season push for the Wild Card.

Nothing short of a long term injury or monumental collapse over the next few weeks will keep Haren off the All Star team. He will probably be the A's sole representative, it'd be nice to see Nick Swisher makes the squad, but with him toeing the line of .300 and not leading any significant batting categories in the AL, sorry Nick I don't think second in the league in walks is your ticket to the Mid-Summer classic, it seems unlikely. Despite having the second best record in the Major League during the 2000s, the A's usually have only one All Star per season, who could forget the glory of 2005 when middle relief pitcher Justin Duchscherer stood proud as the A's sole representative (this despite a 88-74 record), while the Yankees, the team with the best record during the 2000s, usually has half of its hitters in the starting lineup, two to three pitchers, the coaching staff, batboys and their player's mistresses all accounted for.

The one thing I see standing in Haren's way from being named the AL starter, well other than he's not a Yankee or Red Sox, is his relatively-small-for-his-amazing-stats win count of six. But let's, as the American Beauty poster urged, look closer. Since losing his first two games of the season, he has not lost a single decision, oh by the way his total ERA for his two loses? A whopping 0.69. Is it his fault he's on the most anemic hitting team in the entire league? Further proof of his hard luck, the line for his last start Monday versus the Red Sox: 7.2 Innings Pitched, 2 Earned Runs, 1 Walk Allowed, 9 Strikeouts. This is a dream start for most pitchers in the major league. It actually increased his ERA by .06 points. He leaves the game with a two run lead and guess what happens? Injury fill-in closer Alan Embree blows a save in the bottom of the ninth. Earlier this year, Haren had a three start stint versus the nadir of the league Tampa Bay and Kansas City (sorry, Heath) where he got three straight no decisions. Over the course of those three games he allowed four runs, pitched 21 innings and struck out 24 hitters. I repeat: he got no decisions in all three games! In three games versus the Devil Rays and the Royals, the A's couldn't get him more than three runs to give him the wins he deserved (they did win the Devil Rays game, getting three runs in the bottom of the ninth, after Haren was taken out of the game). If Haren was on the Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, Indians or any team with solid hitting and reliable relief pitching, he could conceivably have a record of 10-1 right now.

Being a pessimist, I am predicting Josh Beckett gets the nod. Luckily the voting for pitcher is entirely up to the coaching staff, which I believe will be the A's since they lost last year's AL Championship series to the Tigers, and not the fans, so Japan cannot stuff the ballot box with Dice-K votes and since Schilling is on record as saying he has no plans on retiring, there won't be the old "give the retiring guy his last start" deal in effect. All this leads me to believe the man taking the mound in July in Whatever The Fuck Its Called These Days Park in San Francisco will be the most deserving pitcher.

If you are still unconvinced, here's a picture of Haren (next to A's second baseman Mark Ellis) with his doggie!

When Bad DVD Covers Happen to Good Movies # 2

Film: Bad Education (2004, Pedro Almodovar)

Offending Cover:




The only explanation I can deduce as to the origin of this horrendous cover is either: A.) It was the result of a late into the night compromise when the graphic design department couldn't decide whether to play up Gael Garcia Bernal's handsome looks or his dramatic transformation as a cross dresser in the film, when suddenly, angered and wanting to return home to his wife, children and drinking problem one designer ripped both covers in half and tossed them on his desk in frustration, leading to the other putting them next to the each other and uttering a sentence that started with, "Hey Carl, I have a crazy idea...", resulting in the above. Or B.) A ultra meta statement on the inner turmoil and abused past of the film's character by making the DVD renter or buyer experience that exact inner turmoil and abuse when looking at the cover. Cleverly played, Sony graphic designer!

Better Option:

Perhaps not Pedro Almodovar's most striking poster, but its nicely understated while simultaneously haunting.

Note: Sony has recently released a "Viva Almodovar!" box set featuring amongst other works, Bad Education, I have not purchased it, so I cannot personally confirm, but judging from the box artwork, they may have decided to go with the latter, better option. Good work, Sony, now just destroy all the prior covers and we'll call it a mulligan.